Sasha had been gone for two days, so the practice time had doubled. Noid trained with increasing intensity, and recently he had more and more energy. He wasn't sleeping much but no longer felt sleep-deprived.
A.T.A Power Armor.
An advanced version of the A.T.A Armor. Resists physical damage below 1.2 and reduces damage below 1.7. Durability decreases with the amount of damage taken. Activating the electro-shock state will increase the user's stats by 1.0, and the armor will electro-shock any contacting creature with a stat below 1.2. The state continues until the power runs out or the user becomes overloaded. The maximum cooldown time is 12 hours.
Requires the user to have a physique of 0.9.
Price: 300 accumulation points.
A burning will shone in Noid's eyes, and he trained with even more effort. Not only did this suit improve his endurance, but once he had it, he would be a walking stun baton.
As for the stat increase, Noid didn't know what to think. Having electricity run straight through him to enhance his abilities seemed very painful. It wasn't that he was afraid of pain, but he feared it would affect his fighting. If he activated the electro-shock state in the middle of a battle and was knocked down by the electric shock, any enhancement would be useless.
Even so, he was determined to get this suit. With it, Noid felt he would be strong enough to defend himself and delve deeper into things. He could one-on-one defeat an incomplete modified fanatic without using too many trump cards. But the Doom Cult didn't just have one fanatic; they had a hundred, or even more?
Noid didn't know. He only knew that if he were surrounded by ten modified fanatics at once, the only option would be to run.
And that's not even mentioning the complete modified fanatics. With double the points of the incomplete fanatics, their fighting strength couldn't simply be described as double. It could be three, five, or even many more times greater.
He trained with even more effort, but he had only recently reached 0.8. Even with various enhancement items, he couldn't reach his goal in a short amount of time.
After finishing his last exercise, Noid wiped the sweat from his face with a towel, then opened a large board on the wall. On the board was a complete map of Rorgh city. The red-marked points were the Doom Cult strongholds that he had eliminated. The gray marks were strongholds that the police had eliminated.
Noid decided to deal with all the small Doom Cult strongholds in the shortest possible time. But this was not easy.
Take District 20, for example. It had a total of 17 small strongholds, not including those who had already fled. Assuming one district had 20 strongholds, twenty districts would mean 400 strongholds. Taking the difference into account, the number would not be less than 420.
But this many didn't mean he would have to run to over 400 places to take them down. This wasn't a game; these followers were people and they could think. No one was stupid enough to stay in place like a dungeon waiting for Noid to conquer them.
The situation lately was chaotic. Some small strongholds chose to remain active, or to join forces with other small strongholds to form medium-sized strongholds. Some small strongholds submitted to medium-sized strongholds, or even disbanded.
Medium-sized strongholds weren't very stable either. Similarly to the small strongholds, they either continued to operate, joined forces to form large strongholds, or disbanded.
All of this was because they had lost contact with "high-ranking individual" Garfeild.
The possibility of Garfeild being captured was not high. Otherwise, the Doom Cult's forces in Rorgh city would have collapsed in a short amount of time. He was more inclined to believe that Garfeild had abandoned the small and medium-sized strongholds. His purpose for doing so was unknown.
Noid guessed that the police must have also guessed the same thing. But Garfeild had gone into hiding too well, and both he and the police couldn't find him. And even though the Doom Cult's forces had been abandoned by Garfeild, they couldn't be underestimated. Among them, there was no shortage of madmen, and once there was no one to restrain them, there was no telling what they would do.
Fortunately, he also had his own advantage in this matter. He was a lone wolf, with a high degree of stealth, difficult to guard against, and his fighting strength was hard to measure. He could both focus on finding clues about Garfeild and take down the Doom Cult followers.
After his evening shift, he closed the coffee shop. Wearing his invisibility cloak, he flew away on a flying carpet.
District 20 was adjacent to districts 17, 4, and 2. He planned to first clean out these three areas.
A dark windbreaker, a pitch-black armor, with only two eyes emitting a chilling, eerie green light. He was like a phantom gliding through the night. Noid had no idea that he had become the terrifying nightmare of the Doom Cult followers.
A continuous stream of reports about the location of the fanatics' dens was sent to the police department. The police were already used to this. In fact, a specialized team was on standby to clean up the scenes, and there was no need to worry about safety, because so far, the man in black had never let a single follower escape.
Tonight was like any other "hunt." He took down one stronghold after another. Until Noid encountered a stronghold that had a doom fetus, and it had already hatched into an infant.
An infant doom could be dangerous to a normal person, but to him, it was a matter of whether he stomped it once or twice to make sure it was dead. What puzzled him was where these followers got the doom fetus from. People could blend into the city, but the transportation of goods would definitely be checked strictly. How on earth did they get this thing inside?
Noid thought this might be a breakthrough point. Knowing where these fetuses came from would likely lead to finding out how the Doom Cult infiltrated Rorgh city.
He had, of course, interrogated those he had captured. But their authority in the cult was too low. The person who delivered the fetus and the person who brought them into the city were kept secret. It seemed that only close members or followers directly under Garfeild's command would know.
"Garfeild, Garfeild, Garfeild. I'm starting to get obsessed with him."
Every clue pointed to Garfeild, but the information he gathered all led to a dead end. He rubbed his forehead in annoyance. Even though he had earned a few hundred accumulation points today, he wasn't happy. The feeling of a venomous snake lurking behind his back was not a pleasant one.
Noid's guess was not wrong; Garfeild was indeed targeting Noid.
After the last defeat of a doom stronghold, Garfeild had truly come to see Noid as a potential threat.
He had taken down approximately 70 armed followers and defeated an incomplete modified fanatic, all while possessing extremely powerful tracking abilities.
"This person must be eliminated, or it will be like raising a tiger that will cause disaster."
Garfeild said calmly, but the follower next to him was not calm at all.
"Mr. Garfeild, this... is too difficult."
Given Noid's current combat strength, sending a few followers to assassinate him would just be sending them to their deaths. Bringing in stronger forces would be absolutely impossible to hide from the police and could put them at risk of being discovered. Most importantly, they still didn't know who the damned man in black was or where he lived. The opponent seemed to not be hiding at all, but in reality, was always hidden in the dark.
This truly gave Garfeild a headache. Noid wasn't just simply eliminating the cult's strongholds, but also cutting off his eyes and ears in the districts he had swept clean.
These people didn't join any stronghold but lived like normal people in society, secretly monitoring and observing. Then, they would send reports to Garfeild. They were indeed very difficult to detect. But when they started to monitor Noid, he, in turn, monitored them.
He possessed an exorbitantly expensive tracking device, costing 1000 accumulation points. Because these people only observed and didn't do anything else, he would always take advantage of the opportunity to dismantle the Doom Cult's strongholds, stuff these people in among the members, and then convict them.
"That's right, this person and the police are both looking for clues about me. If they want clues so badly, I'll satisfy them."
"But sir, how..."
"Orna city. Lead him to Orna city, into our territory. The man in black must die there."
"Will you ask the bishop to take action?"
"No, the man in black is very dangerous, but he isn't a high enough level to warrant the bishop's attention. Toriel will handle this."
"Understood."